Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell transplantation is used for the treatment of a wide variety of hematologic disorders, malignancies, and genetic diseases of the blood. For example, hematopoietic progenitor cell transplantation is currently used to treat bone marrow destruction caused by irradiation and/or alkylating therapy in the treatment of cancer.
Hematopoietic progenitor cells are responsible for hematopoietic recovery during the early post-transplant period. However, in some cases progenitor cell engraftment fails to occur due to e.g., micro-environmental defects as part of the underlying disease (e.g., aplastic anemia), stromal cell damage caused by chemoradiotherapy and development of graft-versus-host disease. In some cases, long-term engraftment and hematopoietic recovery also fails to occur. The failure of long-term engraftment to occur is attributed to the lack of cellular engraftment of hematopoietic stem cells.
Hematopoietic stem cells are capable of self-renewal and as such are responsible for maintaining engraftment over prolonged periods of time (e.g., “long-term engraftment”).
Thus, there is a need for the development of methods that improve engraftment of hematopoietic progenitor cells and hematopoietic stem cells.